furrowed the ground before him with his claws. ‘He is not any bigger than I am,’ he said. ‘And he is not a Longwing, so he does not spit poison, and there are no fire-breathing dragons in Britain; I do not see why he is any better than I am.’
‘He is not one jot better, not at all,’ Laurence said, stroking the tensed foreleg. ‘Precedence is merely a matter of formality, and you are perfectly within your rights to eat with the others. Pray do not be quarrelsome, however; they have fled the Continent, to be away from Bonaparte.’
‘Oh?’ Temeraire’s ruff smoothed out gradually against his neck, and he looked at the strange dragon with more interest. ‘But they are speaking French; if they are French, why are they afraid of Bonaparte?’
‘They are royalists, loyal to the Bourbon kings,’ Laurence said. ‘I dare say they left after the Jacobins put the King to death; it was very dreadful in France for a while, I am afraid, and though Bonaparte is at least not chopping people’s heads off anymore, he is scarcely much better in their eyes; I assure you they despise him worse than we do.’
‘Well, I am sorry if I was rude,’ Temeraire murmured, and straightened up to address Praecursoris. ‘Veuillez m’excuser, si je vous ai dérangé,’ he said, to Laurence’s astonishment.
Praecursoris turned around. ‘Mais non, pas du tout,’ he answered mildly, and inclined his head. ‘Permettez que je vous présente Choiseul, mon capitaine,’ he added.
‘Et voici Laurence, le mien,’ Temeraire said. ‘Laurence, pray bow,’ he added, in an undertone, when Laurence only stood staring.
Laurence at once made his leg; he of course could not interrupt the formal exchange, but he was bursting with curiosity, and as soon as they were winging their way down to the lake for Temeraire’s bath, he demanded, ‘But how on earth do you come to speak French?’
Temeraire turned his head about. ‘What do you mean? Is it very unusual to speak French? It was not at all difficult.’
‘Well, it is prodigious strange; so far as I know you have never heard a word of it: certainly not from me, for I am lucky if I can say my bonjours without embarrassing myself,’ Laurence said.
‘I am not surprised that he can speak French,’ Celeritas said, when Laurence asked him later that afternoon, at the training grounds, ‘but only that you should not have heard him do so before; do you mean to say Temeraire did not speak French when he first cracked the shell? He spoke English directly?’
‘Why, yes,’ Laurence said. ‘I confess we were surprised, but only to hear him speak at all so soon. Is it unusual?’
‘That he spoke, no; we learn language through the shell,’ Celeritas said. ‘And as he was aboard a French vessel in the months before his hatching, I am not surprised at all that he should know that tongue. I am far more surprised that he was able to speak English after only a week aboard. Fluently?’
‘From the first moment,’ Laurence said, pleased at this fresh evidence of Temeraire’s unique gifts. ‘You have been forever surprising me, my dear,’ he added, patting Temeraire’s neck, making him preen with satisfaction.
But Temeraire continued somewhat more prickly, particularly where Praecursoris was concerned: no open animosity, nor any particular hostility, but he was clearly anxious to show himself an equal to the older dragon, particularly once Celeritas began to include the Chanson-de-Guerre in their manoeuvres.
Praecursoris was not, Laurence was secretly glad to see, as fluid or graceful in the air as Temeraire; but his experience and that of his captain counted for a great deal, and they knew and had mastered many of the formation manoeuvres already. Temeraire grew very intent on his work; Laurence sometimes came out from dinner and found Temeraire flying alone over the lake, practising the manoeuvres he had once found so boring, and on more than one occasion the dragon even asked to sacrifice part of their reading time to additional work. He would have worked himself to exhaustion daily if Laurence had not restrained him.
At last Laurence went to Celeritas to ask his advice, hoping to learn some way of easing Temeraire’s intensity, or perhaps persuading Celeritas to separate the two dragons. But the training master listened to his objections and said calmly, ‘Captain Laurence, you are thinking of your dragon’s happiness. That is as it should be, but I must think first of his training, and the needs of the Corps. Do you argue he is not progressing quickly, and to great levels of skill, since Praecursoris arrived?’
Laurence could only stare; the idea that Celeritas had deliberately promoted the rivalry to encourage Temeraire was first startling, then almost offensive. ‘Sir, Temeraire has always been willing, has always put forth his best efforts,’ he began, angrily, and only stopped when Celeritas snorted to interrupt him.
‘Pull up, Captain,’ he said, with a rough amusement. ‘I am not insulting him. The truth is he is a little too intelligent to be an ideal formation fighter. If the situation were different, we would make him a formation leader or an independent, and he would do very well. But as matters stand, given his weight, we must have him in formation, and that means he must learn rote manoeuvres. They are simply not enough to hold his attention. It is not a very common complaint, but I have seen it before, and the signs are unmistakable.’
Laurence unhappily could offer no argument; there was perfect truth in Celeritas’s remarks. Seeing that Laurence had fallen silent, the training master continued, ‘This rivalry adds enough spice to overcome a natural boredom that would shortly progress to frustration. Encourage him, praise him, keep him confident in your affection, and he will not suffer from a bit of squabbling with another male; it is very natural, at his age, and better he should set himself against Praecursoris than Maximus; Praecursoris is old enough not to take it seriously.’
Laurence could not be so sanguine; Celeritas did not see how Temeraire fretted. But neither could Laurence deny that his remarks were motivated from a selfish perspective: he disliked seeing Temeraire driving himself so hard. But of course he needed to be driven hard; they all did.
Here in the placid green north, it was too easy to forget that Britain was in great danger. Villeneuve and the French navy were still on the loose; according to dispatches, Nelson had chased them all the way to the West Indies only to be eluded again, and now was desperately seeking them in the Atlantic. Villeneuve’s intention was certainly to meet with the fleet out of Brest and then attempt to seize the straits of Dover; Bonaparte had a vast number of transports cramming every port along the French coast, waiting only for such a break in the Channel defences to ferry over the massive army of invasion.
Laurence had served on blockade duty for many long months, and he knew well how difficult it was to maintain discipline through the endless, unvarying days with no enemy in sight. The distractions of more company, a wider landscape, books, games: these things made the duty of training more pleasant by far, but he now recognized that in their own way they were as insidious as monotony.
So he only bowed, and said, ‘I understand your design, sir; thank you for the explanation.’ But he returned to Temeraire still determined to curb the almost obsessive practising, and if possible to find an alternative means of engaging the dragon’s interest in the manoeuvres.
These were the circumstances which first gave him the notion of explaining formation tactics to Temeraire. He did so more for Temeraire’s sake than his own, hoping to give the dragon some more intellectual interest in the manoeuvres. But Temeraire followed the subject with ease, and shortly the lessons became real discussion, as valuable to Laurence as to Temeraire, and more than compensating for his lack of participation in the debates which the captains held amongst themselves.
